Mining ZimbabweLatest Mining News, Policy and Industry Updates

A SECURITY guard has been arrested for allegedly shooting and wounding two gold panners over suspicion that they were trespassing.

Nkosilathi Ndlovu, employed at Avalon Farm in Esigodini, was not asked to plead when he appeared before Gwanda magistrate, Miss Lerato Nyathi, facing two counts of attempted murder.

He was remanded in custody to February 7.

Prosecuting, Miss Faith Mutukwa said Ndlovu shot Mr. Musani Ncube and Mr. Sibangilizwe Ndlovu with a pellet gun on April 8 last year.

“On 8 April 2019 at around 12 noon Mr. Musani Ncube and Mr. Sibangilizwe Ndlovu were carrying a gold detector walking from Pullen Mine where they had been working towards home in Habane Township. They passed close to Avalon Farm boundary where they met the owner of the farm, Mr. Tim White.

“Mr. White stopped them and questioned them on their movements but they ignored him and continued walking. Ndlovu then approached them while holding a pellet gun and Beretta shotgun and fired two shots at them,” she said.

Miss Mutukwa said Mr. Ncube was shot on the right hand while Mr. Ndlovu was injured on his left leg, buttock, and back.

She said the matter was reported to the police resulting in Ndlovu’s arrest.

The Chronicle

INDEPENDENT Power Producer, Matshela Energy (Private) Limited has applied for the amendment of its power generation licence to entail an additional 40 megawatthour energy storage facility to the proposed 100MW solar plant. 

Last year, the Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority (Zera) granted the IPP a 25-year licence to establish a 100MW solar photovoltaic power plant in Gwanda district, Matabeleland South province.

In a public notice yesterday, Matshela Energy indicated that it has applied for the amendment of its electricity generation licence at Gwanda Timber Farm.

“Matshela Energy, a company licenced under the Electricity Act (Chapter 13:19) of 2002 to construct, own and operate a 100MW solar photovoltaic power plant at Gwanda Timber Farm, Matabeleland South, as an independent power producer has submitted an application to Zera for amendment of its generation licence number GC0082/2019 in terms of Section 49 (1)(b) of the Electricity Act (Chapter 13:19),” reads part of the public notice.

“The licence amendment would entail the addition of a 40MWh energy storage facility to the proposed 100MW solar photovoltaic power plant.”

It said the amendment has been necessitated by the requirement to install an energy storage facility for frequency regulations to enhance grid stability during major systems disturbances.

The IPP said the public notice was being issued in terms of Section 49 (2) of the Electricity Act which requires that the applicant shall publish a notice of the proposed alterations or amendments to his/her licence stating the period within which objections or representations may be made to the authority.

If granted permission by the energy regulator to make the required alterations on the licence,  Matshela Energy will be able produce, store and sell electricity from the proposed power plant to any customers.

It is envisaged that the coming to fruition of the project would add impetus to the much-needed power supply to the national grid.

Since 2010, Zera has licenced over 70 IPPs whose projects are at different stages of implementation.

However, the majority of the IPP projects are failing to take-off largely due to funding constraints.

Faced with a drought that has resulted in reduced power generation at Zimbabwe’s main hydro-electric power station and antiquated equipment at other plants, the country is grappling with an acute electricity deficit.

As of yesterday, the Zimbabwe Power Company indicated on its website that the country was producing 574MW against a national demand of 2 000MW at present.

Due to the prevailing power constraints, economic development is being compromised as the key productive sectors including the manufacturing sector are enduring long hours of load shedding.

 In certain situations, some industries have resorted to using diesel-powered generators to continue operating but the initiative has proved costly_The Chronicle

ZIMBABWE Mining Development Corporation (ZMDC) owned Jena Mine has raised the ire of workers for withholding staff payslips amid claims the omission could be authorities’ way to avoid equipping disgruntled personnel with documentary tools to sue the firm for alleged labour injustices.

Zimbabwe Diamond and Allied Minerals Workers Union (ZDAMWU) secretary general Justice Chinhema said the trend was now common among mines in the country.

“We have been fighting Jena Mine on the issue of issuing payslips to workers,” Chinhema said of the Silobela based mine.

“Failure to issue payslips to workers is a violation of labour laws. The Labour Act compels employers to issue pay advice to its employees.”

Chinhema said he was informed that the mine has chosen not to print payslips because there was no pay structure at the company.

“They informed us that they are not issuing payslips because there is no pay structure at the mine,” said the union leader.

“When we met Jena Mine management in October last year, they promised to rectify the problem.

“We are however surprised that they have not corrected such a serious anomaly. They are actually creating problems for themselves from the workers.”

Chinhema felt Jena Mine could be withholding workers’ payslips out of fear of the unknown.

“We now suspect they fear workers could use the payslips against them on a case before the Labour Court in Kwekwe when they unlawfully reduced workers’ salaries.

“We also suspect that they are hiding how they are deducting statutory obligations,” he said.

A worker at the Mine told NewZimbabwe.com the company has spoken about lack of a pay structure within its systems.

“The company is not giving us payslips. They told us that they currently do not have a pay structure. I understand they are now awarding workers money based on NEC (National Employment Council) rate plus cost of living adjustment which is 50%,” the worker said on condition of anonymity.

Last year, about 400 workers at Jena Mine sued their employer for US$43 million over what they claim were salary underpayments_New Zimbabwe

Zimbabweans love generalising and stereotyping.  I guess, in a way, this makes things easy to understand.

In any case, who needs to grapple with deeper and nuanced analysis when they have to contend with a myriad of serious economic issues facing our country — the late rains, school fees hikes, soaring prices and all?

So criminal elements that wield machetes have been branded “machete gangs”, all because there is a large concentration of artisanal miners in Shurugwi (Midlands province).

For sure, at times some of them have been caught on the wrong side of the law.

It also happens that the media has somehow recently “discovered” criminal activity in our mining sector.

Now the story is that artisanal miners are machete-wielding thugs, or worse still, that the whole country is literally in a state of emergency.

However, the basic questions remain unasked.

Are these acts new? Have machete activities just suddenly reached a tipping point? What really fuels this conflict?

Unfortunately, because we have not taken time to understand the situation, we have seemingly adopted a firefighting approach that risks turning a fairly containable situation into a long-term problem for Zimbabwe.

Artisanal miners

Just the other day, police were rounding up artisanal miners simply because they did not possess the necessary licences to mine.

By implication, the lack of such documents connotes that they are “machete gangs” or machete-wielding thugs.

Sadly, this approach is likely to reverse the gains of formalising artisanal mining and leave a number of well-meaning and hardworking young men and women jobless.

Years back the same approach resulted in a marked decline in gold deliveries.

The average artisanal miner is not rich, but is a young person who has found a creative way to make a living.

Out of the estimated 1,5 million miners currently involved in gold mining, over 80 percent are simply content with eking out a decent living.

Owing to the rudimentary nature of their work, most of them are largely itinerant. How they move and where they move is generally influenced by rumour and half-facts.

Artisanal miners often move in groups because their mining activities necessarily involve teamwork.

Conflict between mobile groups searching for rich ground is sometimes unavoidable.

This is not a new phenomenon.

It has been going on for some time.

The only difference could be that the numbers have increased and conflicts are now being routinely spotlighted by the media.

Tanzania faced the same problem but was quick to realise that the solution did not lie in criminalising the artisanal miner.

They came up with a programme that both empowered miners and compelled them to care for the environment.

The framework also obliges them to produce exclusively for the state and governs their mobility.

There is also a specific legal provision that sets aside a portion of claims for small-scale miners, and the cost of acquiring such claims is heavily subsidised.

The country, which used to produce comparatively less gold than Zimbabwe, now mines more than 50 tonnes per year — close to double our deliveries to Fidelity Printers and Refiners (FPR) last year.

Importance

The importance of small-scale miners in our sector cannot be overemphasised.

After realising that co-opting artisanal miners would help stem gold leakages, Government began encouraging unregistered miners to sell gold directly to FPR a couple of years ago.

However, the miners had to present their identity documents.

By so doing, FPR began to accurately capture trends in this critical sub-sector and growing an auditable database in the process.

Through engagements with the Ministry of Mines and Mining Development and Zimbabwe Republic Police, artisanal miners were encouraged to formalise as a way of attracting loans and equipment critical to their business.

In part, this accounts for the progressive growth in deliveries over the years.

But the programme to formalise the sub-sector could have been better structured.

It turned out to be a sectoral ad hoc activity that did not have clearly defined outcomes.

Today, the demographic data on artisanal miners remains a mere conjecture.

As a result, criminal elements and opportunists have taken advantage of this shortcoming to loot and disrupt an industry that presently supports the majority of rural youths.

The danger for Zimbabwe of the current inquisition into artisanal mining activity is to erroneously label honest, hardworking people illegal.

It must be acknowledged that one of the positives of the land reform programme was to open up previously hidden mining claims to the indigenous population.

Now that they are getting the hang of it, albeit in less formal circumstances, Government must not rush to pull the trigger.

What we need as a country is an aggressive and robust formalisation initiative similar to a census drive.

This will not only assist in identifying culprits, but importantly, channel this fairly rudimentary mining pursuit into proper business.

It may turn out to be the biggest empowerment initiative.

We must neither be distracted nor deluded by criminals into neglecting and condemning enterprising youth.

Munyaradzi Hwengwere is the chairperson of Minex, which is an online and physical marketing platform for miners and related value chain. Feedback: [email protected]

The Sunday Mail

SOME “avenging spirits” are said to have tormented a machete wielding killer who has handed himself to the police and confessed to using the weapon to hack down a fellow gold panner at a Masvingo mine some three years ago.

Police sources said Golden Muziyoni, 28, handed himself to the police in Mvurwi over a week ago.

He had been on the police wanted persons list for three years.

Muziyoni was accused of murdering one Elliot Kutsirayi.

According to sources close to the strange incident, Muziyoni went to the police station complaining of sleepless nights.

He was saying he sees visions of his victim during his sleep ordering him to return the gold he seized from his victim.

Muziyoni has since appeared before Masvingo magistrate Candice Kasere facing murder.

He was remanded in custody to 12 February and was advised to apply for bail at the High Court.

Prosecutor Innocent Mbambo told the court that on 19 March 2017 at Lennox Mine in Mashava, Muziyoni and his accomplice Pinana Manenji, approached the now deceased who was in the company of Carlton Zhou and were panning for gold.

Court heard the two then demanded for gold, gold ore and cash from the now deceased and his colleague.

Court was further told the two panners refused with their belongings resulting in Muziyoni and Zhou taking out machetes from their waist belts and attacking them.

Both victims sustained cuts on different parts of their bodies, but Zhou managed to run away to make a report to the police, leaving his less fortunate colleague being hacked to death.

Court heard that the now deceased sustained deep cuts on the head and bled profusely from the cuts until he became unconscious.

The now deceased, according to prosecutors, was picked up some hours later while lying down helplessly by one Admire Mazamani who took him to the police where he was rushed to Masvingo provincial hospital for treatment.

The now deceased spent four days receiving treatment at the hospital before he was discharged.

He continued battling for life leading to his death on 8 May 2017.

A post-mortem conducted revealed that Kutsirayi succumbed to injuries he sustained from the attack.

New Zimbabwe

ECONOMIC growth at one of the country’s richest gold mining districts, Matobo in Matabeleland South, remains retarded as the local authority grapples to collect revenue from individuals and firms harnessing the yellow metal in the area.

Matobo Rural District Council chief executive officer Mr Elvis Sibanda said the local authority was losing a lot in potential revenue in levies from numerous mines dotted around the district due to lack of a comprehensive database of mining activities in the area.

“The challenge we have in our efforts to collect levies from the mines in our area of jurisdiction is lack of a comprehensive database. Artisanal miners are of no fixed abode when it comes to the nature of their mining activities thus it’s difficult to monitor their operations.

“We have again written to the Ministry of Mines (and Mining Development) to supply us with a list of registered miners and recently we sent our staff comprising the Natural Resources officer and treasurer to Gwanda (Matabeleland South provincial mines office) to get an update of the database. Unfortunately, their filing system was in shambles thus we couldn’t be assisted on that regard.”

Matobo District has one of the biggest gold mining activities in Matabeleland South with 5 772 registered claims. 

The province has consistently been the top gold producing province in the recent past years. In How Mine and Blanket Mine, the province has two producers in the top five of the country’s biggest gold producers. Not far off is Vubachikwe Mine in Gwanda. Also, in Gwanda are the province’s mid-tier producers, Farvic and Jessie mines.

Matobo’s gold extraction activities are mainly concentrated in Sun Yet Sen and areas around as well as those bordering Maphisa Growth Point.

Mr Sibanda said over the past few years the local authority has managed to compile its own database of mines operating within its area of jurisdiction through documenting those registered with local gold ore milling centres.

“Of those (mines) that are registered with milling companies very few are paying  and as a result it affects us in terms of development. As at December 2019 we are being owed $1 050 270 in levies by some of the 109 mines registered in our books although the number of mines far outstrips that since we don’t have a comprehensive database to account for all of them.

“Already (this year) some have renewed their licenses without paying levies. We support the issue of mines as part of the development actors, they create employment, boost the economy of the country even at local level. They contribute positively in the development of the economy but be that as it may be, they should still religiously pay to the local authority what is due to them so that we also exercise our obligations,” he said.

Mr Sibanda said the Association of Rural District Councils was seized with the matter of non-payment of levies  by mining houses.

“Through our association (Association of Rural District Councils) we engaged even His Excellency (President Mnangagwa) last year on the issue of miners who are not paying levies and the strategy was that Government should come-up with a system or policy or law that will compel miners to get a clearance certificate from local authorities indicative that they have paid council levies . . . the Minister of Mines (Winston Chitando) made it clear that he buys into the idea that the miners should pay council levies before their licences are renewed. There is no law currently, that law hasn’t been put in place and already some have renewed their licences without paying levies,” he said.

Matobo Miners Association chairman Mr Khumbulani Moyo said most small-scale miners in the district were into tribute agreements thus making it difficult for them to pay levies to the local authority as in most of the cases there would be uncertainty on who should pay between the proprietor or lessee.

“The challenge is that most of the miners in Matobo have entered into tributary agreements with owners of the mines while some are in different forms of agreements with owners of claims, which makes it impossible for them to pay their levies. In some of the cases you have most that would have pegged their claims in areas with very little deposits as most of the gold rich areas would have been taken by those owning tributes. We have been engaging council, especially during their budget consultative meetings relating to the plight of most of our miners and their inability to pay and I am glad of late our relations with the local authority have been cordial,” he said.

The Sunday News